Skip to main content

Hi,
Im thinking of buying M-Audio's Firewire Solo to use with my laptop as a mobile setup, however the laptop only has USB sockets. Im wondering if anybody has succsessfully used a FW to USB conversion jack in this type of situation
regards
Derm

Tags

Comments

jonyoung Sat, 04/02/2005 - 05:25

I'm no computer tech, but I don't think it will work for you. USB and firewire each have their own protocols, each require dedicated hardware, drivers, controllers, etc...
I use firewire a lot with my setup and can appreiate why it's better than USB for audio (hot swapping drives, better transfer rates). You might want to ask a tech if there's a possibility of installing a firewire card (maybe the USB is a discrete card rather than built into the mobo). Good luck.

anonymous Sat, 04/02/2005 - 05:54

Thanks for the input Jon,
It doesnt seem like a good idea to me, but my brother says he has such a conversion jack that has worked sucessfully in other situations. I dont want to spring for the firewire unit and then discover it wont work this way, as you can imagine. The laptop is also a few years old and I dont fancy investing in a modification.
Derm

anonymous Tue, 04/12/2005 - 12:29

your laptop likely has usb1.1 (being that its older). your hardware that is using firewire is going to require a lot more bandwidth than usb1.1 could offer anyhow... that is why there is usb2.0... regardless of the valid reasons posted b4, you couldn't use a firewire jack into a usb due to the speed difference... which is something like 40x

BigTrey Mon, 04/18/2005 - 22:31

Derm:

Your best bet would to just buy a firewire cardbus and use it for firewire slots. I had this problem with a USB external hardrive and it wouldn't playback the audio fast enough so I ended up buying a firewire drive like a month later. I haven't had a problem with audio playback since. Just buy a cardbus and you should be okay with slots. Check out CompUSA, Circuit City or BestBuy.